So a while back, Eric Nieudan used the art of Henry Justice Ford as inspiration for a community project. People wrote up a monster description based on one of his illustrations, and they all went into a PDF (and later a print book). You can get it here, and I highly recomend it, as there's some great stuff in there.
It was a cool idea. So I'm gonna do it again, this time with a different illustrator, and see what various people in the post g+ blogosphere come up with.
It was a cool idea. So I'm gonna do it again, this time with a different illustrator, and see what various people in the post g+ blogosphere come up with.
So, the artist. If you hadn't realised yet, I fucking love the work of Harry Clarke. His art is a sort of dark, surreal Art Nouveau, with intricately detailed linework contrasting against solid black and white blocks. His specific designs feature lots of grotesque monsters, body horror, boobs, weird androgynous people, bizarre imagery. It's amazingly evocative.
(Clarke's life has an air of tragedy to it. He's widely recognised as one of the greatest modern artists in the field of stained glass, as well as being ahead of his time with his book illustrations. On the other hand, his life was plagued by ill-health, and he died of tuberculosis at the age of 41. Not long before his death, it seems he converted to Catholicism and denounced much of his earlier work (due to its frequently dark or erotic nature), going so far as to request his publisher to burn his drawings.)
Here's a sample of his work, and here's a massive dump of other illustrations of his that I've put together.
So, how will this work?
Simple. If you're interested, you can produce as many entries as you want. Pick one of his illustrations and write up a monster for it. Obviously, include the picture you're writing for in the blog post. Say it's for the Harry Clarke project and make it https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (for IP reasons), and it'll go in the book.I'll be putting up a reddit post here. If you've made something for the project, link it on there, or on this blogpost. (Or, I guess, throw it at me over discord). Once we've got a big pile of entries written in a few month's time, I'll put them in a PDF, and put it up for free on DTRPG. As with Ford's Fairies, a print version might happen, and if it does I'll put it up for sale at printing-cost.
Since the intention is to put all of this in a book, some restrictions are in place for consistency:
-Entries will get a 2-page spread each, image on the left, text on the right. To fit it all on the page, entries should be 400 words or less.
-The project is intended for OSR games, so should be written with those systems in mind. Assume B/X as standard, but keep things in 'compatibility mode'; IE, express AC as 'like Plate armour' rather than 'AC 4'.
-You can produce as many entries as you want.
In addition, my own guidelines here:
-It's fine to write a description of the same illustration somebody else has done, but discouraged.
-Referring to other entries (yours or other people's) so that the entries link together into the bones of a setting is highly encouraged.
-Given the nature of the art, entries with dark, bizarre or sexy themes are 100% OK. Knock yourself out.
-Entries don't need to be monsters. Spells, magic items, terrain features etc are all fine.
-Monster stats should be expressed as:
Armour class: compared to armour types, IE 'as chainmail'.Hit dice: a number of hitdice.Move: compared to a human, IE 'double human' etcAttacks: Attack type, #of attacks, and damage, IE 2 claws (d6)No. Appearing: A number, or dice roll.Morale: a number between 2-12Treasure: Whatever fits.Alignment: Law-neutrality-chaos. And then the actual description and special abilities.
Other than that, knock yourselves out. Once there's plenty together, I'll contact people, stick the entries in a PDF etc.
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